1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to swimming pool inlet location control retrofit devices, which are capable of coupling to any existing swimming pool water inlet and coupling that water to any desired point in the swimming pool.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Because of the costs of construction, return lines to return water to swimming pools generally terminate no more than six inches beneath the water surface. When a heater is operational, the heated water is put into the pool on the top. Hot water, being lighter than cold water, the hot water stays there. A typical home swimming pool will have two water inlets, one in the shallow end, and one in the deep end, and both approximately six inches beneath the water surface level. While this keeps pool construction costs down, it vastly increases pool heating energy requirements.
The main drain on the bottom of the pool takes perhaps ten percent of the water which is removed from the pool. The other 90 percent of the water removed from the pool recirculates through the skimmer in order to remove floating debris from the top of the pool. Accordingly, when the pool is heated, 90 percent of the water removed from the pool to be sent to the heater is the very warm water from the top of the pool. There is very little mixing, and a pool which is very warm at the top may well be cold at the bottom. This causes swimming pool owners to keep their pools heated to a higher temperature than is necessary. In addition, because the heated water is at the top and insulates the cold water from the air, rather than vice versa, water evaporation from the pool is substantially higher than it would be if the pool were of more uniform temperature.
A model of the present invention has been submitted to the OERI department of the Department of Energy and in preliminary testing, according to the Department of Energy, has resulted in approximately 30 percent saving in energy over the widely used prior art system. This 30 percent saving in energy is even more important because solar systems are capable of generating a substantial amount of the energy required for a swimming pool. A solar system requires the use of heat boosting under certain conditions when there is not sufficient supplemental heat generated by the solar system. Since the present system increases efficiency, the 30 percent of the energy that it saves is more likely to be from that which would be necessary to be generated through the use of fuel, oil or natural gas or some other system rather than solar. In the case of a solar system supplemental heat, a system according to the present invention and according to the Department of Energy preliminary data would result in a substantially greater than 30 percent savings in energy.
Swimming pools also lose water through evaporation. A typical home sized swimming pool in the desert area with a prior art solar heating system would lose approximately 1,700 gallons of water from the pool per week. A system according to to the present invention, and according to test results would reduce this result to 500 or 600 gallons per week by reducing the surface temperature of the water.
In hot areas, solar systems can be used to cool the pool. For example, in the Phoenix area, swimming pools get uncomfortably hot, between 100.degree. to 108.degree., depending on the temperature, during the early summer months. Running of a solar system in reverse at night cools the pool because the night time temperature may well drop to 80.degree. or less while the day time temperature remains at substantially over 100.degree.. Cooling the pool reduces the water loss through evaporation with consequent savings to the pool owner. Cooling the pool with the system according to the present design in comparison to the prior best solar cooling system reduces chemical loss and results in a 20 percent reduction in the amount of chemicals which need to be put into the pool from approximately $200.00 worth of chemicals per month in a desert area to $150 per month.
The preceding advantages accrue from reducing the surface temperature of the pool while maintaining the temperature at lower depths at the same comfortable temperature.